The TradeVine – Entertainment Trade Article Highlights – June 14th, 2019
Welcome to the TradeVine whose purpose is to encourage the entertainment industry to read their trades: Variety, Backstage, Hollywood Reporter, etc. Enjoy learning about your industry.
Each Friday, The TradeVine seeks out a few of the informative trade articles you may have missed. Please visit the trade, itself, for the entire article.
Backstage – Having a Life Outside of Acting Is Critical to Success, By Jeffrey Fox
I never could sit still. I felt like if I wasn’t always doing something, I was failing. Losing. And that terrified me. The worst part was the quiet; I needed to be around noisy people and places. I equated chaos with being alive. If loud music was life, meditating was death. I never slept more than five hours a night, usually from 3–8 a.m. when it was least likely anything was happening without me.
As a young actor, I never stopped. My career juices were always flowing! From the second I woke up to the moment just before falling asleep, I breathed, tasted, ate, everything my acting career. I had my acting classes and showcases; I critiqued movies and analyzed everything. It was all happening—I was an actor.
I didn’t have any money so I lived in a dump. I had three part-time jobs and four roommates in a studio apartment. On Mondays and Wednesdays, I slept on the couch. The other days, I was on the floor. Read Entire Article Here
The Hollywood Reporter – Was ‘Men in Black’ the Last Movie of Its Kind?, By Phil Pirrello
The 1997 Will Smith-Tommy Lee Jones film was a comic book adapation back when actors, not IP, were the stars of a film.
Twenty two years ago, Men in Black was the last gasp of a kind of filmmaking, a comic book movie that didn’t publicize the fact that it was a comic book movie. Director Barry Sonnenfeld’s summer blockbuster felt like an “original idea,” even though it was an adaptation. Back then, the IP wasn’t the star — the actual stars were.
1997 was peak Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, and their dynamic — Smith’s effortless charisma juxtaposed with Jones’ deadpan everything — was enough to put butts in seats. Pairing the two as secret agents charged with policing our world for otherworldly threats — and having them team up to stop an alien “bug” wearing an Edgar (Vincent D’Onofrio) suit — is as popcorn friendly of a concept as one needs. And it’s refreshing how easily-digestible the story’s concepts are when compared to other recent comic book movies. There’s no alternate dimensions, no Thanos-level “snaps.” No bloated three-hour run time. There’s just 98 minutes of good guys trying to stop some very gross baddies from damaging the universe’s calm. That’s less than two hours for Men in Black to build a world, craft character arcs, show us inventive set pieces, and deliver subtle satire. Read Entire Article Here
Variety – How FX Chief John Landgraf Built One of TV’s Hottest Brands, By Daniel Holloway
Theme parks aren’t exactly John Landgraf’s idea of a good time. But the FX chief was in Orlando in January for the Walt Disney Television sales conference when he got a call from Disney CEO Bob Iger, asking if he wanted to visit the new “Avatar”-themed attraction at Animal Kingdom.
At 7:30 a.m., a Disney ambassador in a checkered vest picked up Landgraf and FX chief operating officer Chuck Saftler at their hotel and drove them to the front gate of the park, where they were greeted by a Disney World official and escorted inside. With no other guests on site, the FX execs rode the Na’vi River Journey, a sort of 22nd-century Jungle Cruise through the fictional realm of James Cameron’s epic sci-fi feature; and Avatar Flight of Passage, a thrill ride in which visitors soar atop one of the film’s flying “mountain banshees” in an augmented-reality environment.
Landgraf liked it. Read Entire Article Here
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